The Splendid Preacher by Dr. Jenks

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 19, 1864

The Splendid Preacher.

By Dr. Jenks

RICHARD BAXTER preached as feeling that the truths of God were too great and glorious in themselves to be covered up with the little trappings of human adornments. He would as soon have thought of hanging the rainbow with tinsel. His eloquence was not in rounded sentences. He never preached a sermon to display his scholastic learning or his power of logic; but his aim was ever to win souls to Christ. If fine and elegant sermons are tolerated at all, it is in the press only, when they are to be read as discussion of a subject, and read either as an intellectual exercise or as a discipline of conscience. In the pulpit splendid sermons are splendid sins. They dazzle, and amuse, and astonish, like brilliant fire-works, but they throw daylight on no subject. They draw attention to the preacher instead of the subject. The splendid preacher, like the pyrotechnist, calculates on a dark night among his attendants; and amid the coruscations of the pulpit, his skill and his art are admired and applauded, but Christ is not glorified. If angels weep and devils mock, it is at the pulpit-door of a splendid preacher.—Dr. Jenks.